BAFTA success for ‘mindlessly difficult’ film without colour, actors, plot

BAFTA judges have embraced a ‘return to the beginnings of cinema’, after the film ‘Man (unknown) Holding Balloon and Waving From a Distant Hill’ swept the board at this year’s ceremony.

Eschewing ‘modern’ movie techniques such as colour, focus, a script or trained actors, the film was lauded as ‘indescribably boring’ to all but the most pretentious of viewers, despite it lasting less than a minute.

Fending off fierce competition from a silent movie, a cartoon stick man drawn on the edges of a text book and a saucy postcard from Blackpool, ‘Man…Hill’ has shown the world that the British film industry is still at the forefront of making self-indulgent guff.

“We thought France might win with their silent movie, ‘If You Don’t Enjoy This You Are a Rétarde'”, confessed director Georgé Brian-S’Mith.

“But we’re glad that on the day, ‘Man…Hill’ appealed more directly to the judges sense of intellectual superiority.”

“This film asks many important questions of the audience”, gushed one of the judges. “Does the balloon represent longing? Is he waving goodbye to lost innocence, or trying to stop a taxi? And are those a pair of pants on his head?”

Bafta success

The judging panel were ‘blown away’ by the ‘highly authentic’ film, shot using a genuine 1937 ‘Mov-o-scope’ kerosene cine camera, with the loss of several lives.

“Fortunately, for the BAFTAs we were able to transfer it to Betamax”, explained S’Mith. “At room temperature, the chemicals on the original lead-and-phosphur film had a slight tendency to burst into flames.”

The ‘art house classic’ will be shown at selected cinemas across the country, and critics are hopeful that at 55 seconds running time, it could be too short for the proles to walk out on.